THE WATSON PROBLEM
“Sherlock Holmes: Fact or Fiction?” By Thomas S.
Blakeney. (Murray. 2s. 6d. net.)
“Sherlock Holmes and Doctor Watson: The Chronology of
Their Adventures.” By H. W. Bell. (Constable. Limited to 500 copies. 15s. net.)
(BY S. C. ROBERTS)
The Observer, Oct. 30, 1932
Parturiunt mures, nascetur magnificus mons. Thus, adapting what Holmes would have been
swift to recognise as a line familiar to all students of classical antiquity,
are we tempted to exclaim on beholding two considerable works of scholarship
inspired in some measure, as we are tempted to infer, by certain modest Prolegomena put forward in the spring of
last year. Certainly, all serious students, as well as amateurs, will welcome
the evidence afforded by these two volumes of the vigorous condition of modern
Watsonian scholarship.
***
Both authors recognise that the
central question is a chronological one; Mr. Bell, indeed, confines himself
also entirely to this aspect of the problem; Mr. Blakeney, in spite of a less
pretentious format, is not afraid to make certain psychological inferences with
a view to “revealing hidden depths in Holmes’s life and character.” Mr.
Blakeney divides his study of Holmes into three parts devoted to his
personality, his relations with Scotland Yard, and his professional career
respectively, adding a section on the literature and a number of appendices. In
his discussion of Holmes’s early life Mr. Blakeney reverts to the problem,
first approached, we believe, by Father Ronald Knox, of his university training.
Arguing from his enthusiasm for chemistry and from the fact that his college
friend, Trevor, belonged to a Norfolk family,
Mr. Blakeney inclines to the belief that Holmes was a Cambridge man. While nothing would give us
greater satisfaction than to be able honestly to subscribe to such a belief, we
are compelled to remark that the further evidence with which Mr. Blakeney seeks
to fortify his argument is of an extremely dubious character. To accept the
“Camford” of “The Creeping Man” as “a somewhat transparent alias for Cambridge” is, in itself,
an instance of credulity not wholly worthy of Mr. Blakeney’s high standards of
criticism. Of the autumnal habits of other universities we profess no accurate
knowledge, but what Cambridge
professor was ever known to lecture on September 11?
***
Here we touch upon the intricate
question of Watson canon. Mr. Blakeney’s general view that “all the stories
record true events in the life of Holmes, but that the collections in ‘His Last
Bow’ and ‘The Case Book’ come to us through the hand of an editor” is
commendably cautious, but we confess that we regard with some misgiving his
desire for a J. M. Robertson in the Watson field, “sifting the accretions of
the pseudo-Watson from the hand of the veritable John Henry.” The prospect of
the chaos of textual disintegration which might result from the work of such a
commentator is one to which we cannot look forward with equanimity. Mr.
Blakeney should reflect on the course taken by Homeric criticism in recent
years and, in particular, upon the fact that a distinguished scholar, whom his
severest critic would never have accused of conservatism, was led to emphasise
of the “increasing number of critics who believe in an original unity of
authorship and design.” A minute example may be taken from Mr. Bell’s book, now
before us. The title of the work, in accordance with custom, appears on the
title-page, the half-title, and the jacket. Each of the three titles shows
variants, in wording or punctuation, from the other two. Are we here to discern
the work of a deutero- and a trito-Bell?
A phrase in the sentence quoted
above from Mr. Blakeney is an instance of the need of scrupulous accuracy in
critical investigation. In the canon there is no record, so far as we are
aware, of Watson’s second name, though the combination “John Henry” was put
forward conjecturally in our “Prolegomena.” However keenly we may be gratified
by Mr. Blakeney’s “veritable,” we are bound to insist, as Holmes would have
done, upon the distinction between objective data and legitimate surmise.
Mr. Bell, on the other hand,
protests against this particular conjecture on the ground that Newman joined
the Church of Rome about seven years before Watson was born, and that Mrs.
Watson, as a devout Tractarian, would not have named her son after him. This
does not convince us; long after his secession Newman remained an object of
reverence and affection in the hearts of many Anglicans.
***
These, however, are minor and
conjectural matters. Mr. Bell, like Mr. Blakeney, rightly devotes considerable
attention to the major problem of the date of Watson’s marriage with Miss
Morstan. (We abstain advisedly from the phrase “first marriage,” since the view
has been put forward, though not yet published, by one scholar at least, that
Watson was a widower when he met Miss Morstan: we are totally unable to accept
this view, but, as Holmes would say, “the interplay of ideas and the oblique
uses of knowledge are often of extraordinary interest.”) Mr. Blakeney is an
able exponent of the view that the dates of “The Sign of Four,” being
internally consistent, should be accepted as the basis of any chronological
investigation of the Watson-Morstan alliance. Here much seems to depend upon
the time when the record was actually written down and upon the degrees of care
with which manuscript and proof were revised. If it can be established that the
dates quoted in the work were subjected to a thorough revision before
publication, then we shall be prepared to accept the year 1888 as the year of “The
Sign of Four.” But what are we to say of a narrative which, as the result of
Beaune at lunch and love at first sight, confuses September with July, a leg
with a shoulder, and a musket with a tiger-cub?
Mr. Bell takes an intermediate
course, ascribing “The Sign of Four” to the year 1887, and the Watson-Morstan
marriage to the autumn of the same year. In arriving at this conclusion he does
full justice to Mr. MacCarthy’s admirable deduction in regard to the number of
pearls, and himself argues convincingly for September, as against July, in view
of the menu ordered by Holmes for dinner.
***
On the question of Watson’s marriage
in 1902 or 1903 there would appear by now to be a fair measure of agreement.
Both Mr. Blakeney (in a series of reasoned arguments) and Mr. Bell (somewhat
cavalierly) dismiss the possibility of the beautiful Violet de Merville having
consented to become Mrs. Watson, though it is worthy of remark that neither
critic suggests an alternative bride. Mr. Bell, however, introduces what seems
to us an entirely unnecessary complication by postulating yet another Watson
marriage between the time of Holmes’s return and the marriage of 1902-3. The
principal piece of evidence for this curious theory would appear to be the
reference, in “The Veiled Lodger,” to the fact that at some period late in 1896
Watson was not living with Holmes. “The only conceivable motive for his
desertion of Holmes…” writes Mr. Bell, “is marriage.” It must surely be a
somewhat limited imagination which is unable to conceive any other reason for
this temporary separation. Why should not Watson have been staying at his club
for a week or two, while his bedroom was being re-decorated? The duration of
this hypothetical marriage must also have been severely limited: Watson was living
with Holmes in November, 1895, and again in January, 1897. Mr. Bell
supplementary arguments are still less convincing: Watson, he says, was
middle-aged and no longer an active companion for Holmes; yet on a bitterly
cold morning in 1897 he was in a cab, dressed and breakfastless, ten minutes
after Holmes had wakened him. Again, Mr. Bell conjectures that “Mrs. Hudson’s
cooking was not without its influence, and that he (Watson) entertained visions
of something more succulent than the ‘nice chop,’ with cabbage cut in cubes,
potatoes innocent of butter, and salad naked and unashamed…”[p. 92] Here we are
at a loss to recognise the sources of Mr. Bell’s evidence. We do, however,
recall the “oysters and a brace of grouse” of “The Sign of Four” and the
“curried fowl, ham, and eggs” of the breakfast in “The Naval Treaty.” Mrs.
Hudson’s cuisine, as Holmes admitted, was “a little limited” but to talk of
cabbage-cubes and naked salad is to cast an unwarranted slur upon one of the
great landladies of literature.
***
It would, however, be ungenerous to
end upon a note of detailed criticism. The great merit of Mr. Bell’s book lies
in the care and labour which he has expended in his arrangement of the
adventures in chronological sequence. That this sequence may be upset by the
findings of later scholarship Mr. Bell would be the first to admit; but the
appearance of his book simultaneously with Mr. Blakeney’s encourages us to hope
that we are appreciably nearer the time when the definitive “Handbook to
Sherlock Holmes Studies,” desiderated by Mr. Blakeney, may be available for the
use of students. Nous verrons…, as
Holmes would say.
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